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The legislation released Wednesday is meant to build pressure on House Republican leaders who have so far shown little public urgency on the issue of immigration reform. And already, some GOP lawmakers — particularly those who hail from competitive districts or areas with large concentrations of Latino residents — are expressing some openness to the Democrats’ proposal.

Their plan is to take the comprehensive immigration reform legislation that passed the Senate with wide bipartisan margins in June, but without the so-called border surge amendment added in the final days of the floor debate. In its place, Democrats have inserted a bipartisan border-security bill whose chief sponsor is House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas).

“The biggest issue I had with the Senate bill was the border-security piece. I support the McCaul bill,” said California Rep. Jeff Denham, one of a handful of House Republicans who have voiced support for immigration reform. “It sounds very positive, but I will always wait to see what those details are.”

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said, “there’s a lot of good things” in the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill and indicated some interest in the House Democratic plan.

The bill’s release Wednesday doesn’t directly change the prospects for immigration reform in the Republican-led House, where the issue has been put on the back burner while other matters such as Syria and fiscal battles have consumed lawmakers’ attention.

A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in an email Wednesday that the House Democratic immigration legislation has a “zero percent” chance of making it to the floor. And a House Judiciary Committee aide indicated that the chairman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, isn’t inclined to take up the bill in his panel.

“The immigration bill introduced today by several House Democrats is basically the Senate bill,” the aide said. “Chairman Goodlatte strongly opposes the Senate bill since it repeats the mistakes of past immigration overhauls, and he has made it clear that the Senate bill is a nonstarter in the House.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has been trying to push immigration reform across the finish line for years, dismissed the attempt from House Democrats and said, “of course not,” when asked whether the legislation could pass the GOP-led House.

“That’s like if I filed a bill today, naming myself as president of the United States and chief Supreme Court justice,” he said. “It’s as relevant … as if I did something like that.”

“This is not a challenge to the speaker,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “This is just a suggestion.”

But it’s clear that Democrats — who see immigration reform as a winning political issue — want to show they’re trying to advance a measure while the GOP is barely moving.

Gary Segura, a co-founder and principal for the polling firm Latino Decisions, said House Democrats faced a strategic problem because Republicans could deliver “lip service” to their constituents without having to take decisive action. Releasing a bill could force Republicans to do precisely that.

The bill introduction was “absolutely the right thing to do to put the pressure on,” he said.

Boehner has indicated several times that his chamber would not take up the Senate Gang of Eight bill, and the House Republican leadership has deferred largely to Goodlatte on immigration. The House Judiciary Committee chairman is pushing a piecemeal approach that would pass several different reform bills, rather than one single piece of legislation.